The Wonder of the Book - c.ymcdn.comc.ymcdn.com/.../The-Wonder-of-the-Book.pdfT he wonder of the Book grows upon us as our experience is enlarged, for the more deeply we search it,

A9 wonder of the Book f:A9 The Wonder of the Book 15/11/2007 08:14 Page 1

Summarised and selected by T. H. Brown from The Wonder of ‘the Book’ by Prof. Dyson Hague, M.A.

(London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, n.d.)


Product Code: A9

ISBN 978 1 86228 008 3

© 1987, 2007 Trinitarian Bible SocietyTyndale House, Dorset Road, London, SW19 3NN, UK

www.trinitarianbiblesociety.org

5M/12/07


T he wonder of the Book grows uponus as our experience is enlarged, forthe more deeply we search it, the

more we feel that the Bible is not merelya book, but The Book. It alone is theuniversal Book, the eternal Book, the Bookfor all time. It is the voice of the Lord. Itstands alone, unapproachable in itsgrandeur, as high above all other books asheaven is above earth, or as the Son ofGod is above the sons of men.

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The Wonder of the Book


One of the first things about thisBook that evokes our wonder isthe very fact of its existence, for

there was never any order given to anyman to plan the Bible, nor was there everany concerted plan on the part of themen who wrote to write the Bible. The wayin which the Bible grew is one of themysteries of our time. Little by little,century after century, it came out infragments, written by various men, withoutany concerted arrangement. One wrote apart in Arabia, another in Syria, a third inPalestine, another in Greece and Italy, andthe first part was written hundreds ofyears before the man who wrote the lastpart was born.

Here is a Book that took at least fifteenhundred years to write, spanning sixtygenerations of this world’s history. Itenlarges our conceptions of God andgives us new ideas of His infinite patienceas He watched the strain, the haste andrestlessness of man across the feverishyears, while slowly the great Book grew.Here a little, and there a little, history,prophecy, poetry and biography, it cameforth before a needy world in its finishedcompleteness.

There was no pre-arrangement by men. It isnot as if Matthew, Mark, Luke and John metin committee and after solemn conferenceand seeking for the leading of the Spirit,Matthew undertook to write of Christ as theKing, and Mark agreed to write of Him asthe Servant, Luke undertaking to delineateHim as the Man, and John determining tocrown it all by writing of Him as the Son ofGod. It was not as if Paul and James metand after talking and praying about itagreed that Paul should write of thedoctrinal and James of the practicalaspects of the Christian faith. There is notrace of such a thing. They simply wrote asthey were moved by the Spirit to meet apresent need, to teach some glorious truth,to express some earnest longing, and fromthe aggregation of their writings came thismiraculous unit that we call the NewTestament.

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The Wonder of its Formation


T he Bible, though regarded as aBook, is in fact a library of sixty-sixvolumes, written by between thirty

and forty different authors, in threelanguages, on totally different topics andin extraordinarily different circumstances.One wrote history, another biography, onewrote on theology, another poetry, anotherprophecy, others on philosophy,jurisprudence, genealogy, ethnology, andnarratives of wonderful journeys. Here inthe Bible we have them all, in a little Bookthat a child can carry in its little hand. Thestrangest thing of all is that, although theirsubjects are so diverse and difficult, andalthough it was impossible for the manwho wrote the first pages to have theslightest knowledge what others wouldwrite 1,500 years later, yet this collectionof writings is not only unified by men inone Book, but so unified by God, theAuthor, that we can never think of it todayas anything else but one Book! And oneBook it is indeed—the miracle of allliterary unity.

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The Wonder of its Unification


A nother marvellous thing about thisBook is that it is the only book inthe world read by all classes and

all sorts of people. Literary people rarelyread a child’s book, and children do notread books of philosophy and science.There is but one Book that is read by thewisest of men, read to the little child, andread by the old man as he trembles onthe brink of another world. ProfessorDyson Hague asked the nurse what shewas reading to his daughter, and shereplied. ‘I am reading the story of Josephin the Bible‘, and the child added, ‘Andplease do not stop her, father.’ She waslistening with delighted interest to astory that had been written in Hebrewthree thousand five hundred yearsbefore. Not far away from the sameroom where the child was listening,there sat one of the greatest of modernscientists, Sir William Dawson (a humblebeliever in the Lord Jesus Christ), readingwith profound devotion and higher delightthe pages of the same marvellous Book.Here is a phenomenon—one of the ablestof modern scientists delights in reading aBook which is the joy of a little child inthe nursery!

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The Wonder of its Interest


T he Book was not written in theseats of learning, either at Athensin Greece or at Alexandria in Egypt,

but in Palestine. Some of the writers werenot distinguished for their scholarship.Some did not speak even their ownlanguage perfectly. Peter was betrayed byhis Galilean dialect, and he and Johnwere described in Acts 4.13 as‘unlearned and ignorant men’. Many ofthe men who wrote the Bible were of thatcharacter. One was a farm-hand, anothera shepherd, others were fishermen. Theywere men of no literary reputation, andyet by the mysterious power of God theBook has become the standard oflanguage of the most literary nations ofthe world.

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The Wonder of its Language


T he Bible has withstood ages offerocious and incessantpersecution. Century after century

men have tried to burn it and to bury itand to extirpate it. Kings of the earth setthemselves and rulers of the church havetaken counsel together to destroy it.Diocletian the Roman Emperor

inaugurated in AD 303 a terrific onslaughtupon the Book. Bibles were destroyed,Christians were slain, and the Emperorboasted that the very name of theChristians was blotted out, and yet after afew years, the Bible came forth as Noahfrom the ark to repeople the earth, and inAD 325 Constantine enthroned the Bibleas the Infallible Judge of Truth in the greatcouncil of the Church held in that year.

Later the Church of Rome denied theScriptures to the people and for ages theBible was practically an unknown book.Martin Luther was a grown man when hesaid that he had never seen a Bible in hislife. No jailor ever kept a prisoner closerthan the Church of Rome kept the Biblefrom the people.

The worst opposition of all has beenduring the last two hundred years, withrationalism and modernism seeking toundermine the authority, inspiration andinerrancy of the Holy Scriptures. It wasVoltaire’s boast that within one hundredyears of his death not a Bible would befound save as an antiquarian curiosity.Many more than one hundred yearshave passed, and other pens and othervoices have joined in the attack, but theBible remains and is being morewidely distributed and used thanever before.

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The Wonder of its Preservation


Y ou need no historical critic forGod’s own Word. The Holy Spirit,who is the Author of the Book,

makes it speak to our souls in such poweras to give divine conviction. Men mayarise to unsettle and destroy, but the Spiritof Christ comes to validate and confirm,with a certainty that is incommunicable bymere reason, and is impervious to theassaults of doubt. Spurgeon spoke of apoor woman who was challenged by anagnostic to prove that the Bible in herhand was God’s Word. She pointed to thesun and said, ‘Can you prove that there isa sun in the sky?’ The unbelieveranswered, ‘Of course, the proof is that itwarms me and I see its light.’ ‘That is it,’she replied, ‘and the best proof that thisBook is the Word of God is that it warmsand lights my soul.’

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The Bible is Self-Authenticating


We do not gild gold. We do notpaint rubies. We cannot brightendiamonds. Neither can any

artist add any final touch to this finishedWord of God. It stands as the sun in thesky and this proud age can add nothingto it. It has the glory of God and anyattempt to improve it can but disfigure it.It speaks with authority and breaks uponyou as the Voice from heaven. Fivehundred times in the Pentateuch, threehundred times in the following books andtwelve hundred times in the prophets, thedeclarations are prefaced or concludedwith such expressions as ‘Hear the Wordof the Lord’, or ‘Thus saith the Lord’. Noother book dares thus to address itself tothe universal conscience. No otherspeaks with such a binding claim orpresumes to command the obedience ofall mankind. The Book speaks to theinner conscience with the authority ofGod Himself.

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It cannot be improved


Men think of the Bible as a Bookthat was inspired, and this istrue, but it is also true that it

still comes sweeping into the hearts ofmen today, and the same breath of Godthat gave it life makes it living andspiritually energizing today. This is a mostremarkable and unique feature of theBible—to feel that it is mine. Its promisesare mine. The 103rd Psalm is not ancientHebrew, it is a present-day message to mysoul. The other day I took up an old Biblethat my mother gave me, in which yearsago I had marked Genesis 28.15 when Iwas in great trouble and had to leave mywife and children and travel in quest ofhealth in distant lands. One day as Iopened the Bible at random these wordscame before my eye. Shall I ever forget theflood of comfort that swept over my soulas I read that verse? ‘Behold, I am withthee, and will keep thee in all placeswhither thou goest, and will bring theeagain into this land’. All the critics in theworld could never persuade my soul thatthose words were a mere echo of somefar-off relic of a Babylonian legend ororiental myth. No, no! That was a messageto me, and it swept into my soul as a voicefrom heaven and lifted me up. No man willever shake me out of the conviction thatthat message was God’s own Word to me—inspiring because inspired.

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It is living and powerful


It changes men’s lives and alters theirdestinies. It inaugurates worldwidemovements. A single text transformed

Luther and launched the greatest ofmodern epochs. It comes today intocommunities of unrighteousness as aregenerating force.

The supreme wonder of the Book is Christ,Who is its fulness, its centre, its greatsubject. Of the whole Book it may be said,‘The glory of God did lighten it, and theLamb is the light thereof’ (Revelation 21.23).As long as men live upon the face of theglobe, the Book that tells of Christ theRevealer, Redeemer, the Risen, Reigning,Returning Lord will draw men’s hearts likea magnet, and men will stand by it, andlive for it, and die for it.

Do not think that we ought to read thisBook as we read any other book, andstudy and analyse it just as we do anytextbook in literature or science. No!When you come to this Book, come to itwith reverence. Read it with a plea for theSpirit’s help. ‘Put off thy shoes from off thyfeet, for the place whereon thou standestis holy ground’ (Exodus 3.5). Other booksare of the earth. This is from heaven, it isthe living Word of the Living God,supernatural in origin, divine inauthorship, regenerative in power, infalliblein authority, personal in application,inspired in its every part.

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It reveals Christ


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Product Code: A9

ISBN 978 1 86228 008 3

The aims of the Society� To publish and distribute the HolyScriptures throughout the world in many languages.

� To promote Bible translations which are accurate and trustworthy, conforming to theHebrew Masoretic Text of the Old Testament,and the Greek Textus Receptus of the NewTestament, upon which texts the EnglishAuthorised Version is based.

� To be instrumental in bringing light andlife, through the Gospel of Christ, to thosewho are lost in sin and in the darkness offalse religion and unbelief.

� To uphold the doctrines of reformedChristianity, bearing witness to the equaland eternal deity of God the Father, God theSon and God the Holy Spirit, One God inthree Persons.

� To uphold the Bible as the inspired,inerrant Word of God.

� For the Glory of God and the increaseof His Kingdom through the circulationof Protestant or uncorrupted versions ofthe Word of God.

For introductory literature and catalogue pleasewrite to the Society at the address below.

Trinitarian Bible SocietyTyndale House, Dorset Road,London, SW19 3NN, England

e-mail: [email protected]


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The Wonder of the Book - c.ymcdn.comc.ymcdn.com/.../The-Wonder-of-the-Book.pdfT he wonder of the Book grows upon us as our experience is enlarged, for the more deeply we search it,